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Bonnaroo continues festival trend of ignoring metal

Headed to Manchester, TN for Bonnaroo? If so, it’s not going to be to see any metal. Much like Coachella, the festival has nothing remotely heavy on it. In fact, it shares a lot of the same artists as Coachella this year. With the exception of headliners U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers, this could be pretty much any big festival. At least the two New York festivals are offering up Tool and Nine Inch Nails. Of all the destination festivals, Bonnaroo has embraced heavier stuff earlier than the others. In fact, just last year, Lamb of God and Clutch played the four-day festival. The year before, Slayer, Pallbearer and Between the Buried and Me played, along with Unlocking the Truth. Mastodon, Meshuggah, Opeth, GWAR and The Melvins have also played at the festival dating back to 2010. This year? Nothing. Not even the shoegaze band nothing.

Granted, metal’s always been an outlier at the fest, with a few bands being added to flesh out the lineup. Bonnaroo has always tended towards more jam-bands than anything else, at least historically. However, the metal bands they have booked usually been really good bands, some of them being one-offs. And like we’d said about Coachella, the rise of rock and metal festivals like the Danny Wimmer Presents ones has probably made some of the bigger marquee bands opt to play at those festivals over one where they’d stick out like a sore thumb. It’d be interesting to hear from the Superfly and A.C. Entertainment as to why they’ve totally ignored metal at the festival for the first time in at least seven years, however.

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